Our legendary Honorary Chairman died... Sad news came from Moscow… For the last four years he continued a hard fight against the terrible illness, but finally he resigned... He is survived by his wife Natasha and his son Alexander, a famous economist.

Yuri was an extra-ordinary player, but his achievements as a trainer are much higher. He trained Anatoly Karpov and Alexandra Kosteniuk, the ex-World Champions. He trained the Soviet National Team in European Championships of 1977 and 1980 and in the 1980 Olympiad, where the team won the gold medals. After dissolving of the Soviet Union he trained the Russian team, the winner of the Olympiad in Manila 1992.

He established the FIDE Trainers’ Commission (TRG) in 2000 during the Istanbul Olympiad and developed it to well established professional organization, where the main idea is to educate trainers and to promote chess on a higher level. All his ideas in trainers’ titles and regional Academies were implemented with great success. He started the trainers’ seminars in Berlin and Singapore Trainers’ Academies. He was a Chairman of TRG by 2009, when he became a Honorary Chairman.

As a player he played a few times in the Soviet Championships and won a few strong international tournaments such as London 1983, Polanica Zdroj 1979, Dortmund 1983 and Yurmala 1987. But much more successes he achieved as a team player - in most cases he was the soul of the teams in which he played. He was a member of the winner teams of the European Cup in 1976 and 1979, a member of the Burevestnik Team, a member of the World Students’ Championship in 1971 and a member of the Soviet Spartakiad in 1983. He lived in Moscow and played for the Russian Federation team as well. Finally, he was a member of Soviet National team which played against the World in 1984, in London. There he scored a 2-2 draw against IGM Robert Huebner.

Razuvaev wrote a lot of articles for world top chess magazines, but his best work was a book on Akiva Rubinstein’s selected games, which became a classic. Another book the ‘Transposition into the Endgame’ became a classic as well for players and trainers.

He was a very warm person with a fantastic intellectual and sharp sense of houmor. FIDE Trainers’ Commission will always remember our founder and first Chairman.